After many years of working in Swedish sport, David Hanley and I decided to start an art project to help explain some of the essential Swedish sport administration terms in English. In this blog post you will find An English lexicon and guide to Swedish sport administration terminology to download in A3 poster format for you to hang in the office or meeting rooms of your sports organisation. Art Imitating Life Enjoy! Mark & David swedish-sport-terminology-a3-1-1Download ..read more

Irish football: at a crossroads but not dancing anymore I was recently invited on to Morning Ireland on RTE radio by Darren Frehill to discuss the crossroads that Irish football now finds itself at. You can listen here from about 40 secs: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22326843/ In the following text I would like to extend on a few of the ideas that I brought up. The choice of who will be the new Irish manager (men and women) is basically addressing the process of solving a short-term need. However, Irish football seems to be at a serious crossroads. Indeed, one could argue that Irish ..read more

A Player Learning in Development Framework We recently published a paper in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching. The paper is open access and can be downloaded from here:  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17479541211002335 In this paper we propose that a constraints-led approach (CLA), predicated on the theory of ecological dynamics, utilising Adolph’s (2019) notion of learning IN development, provides a viable framework for capturing the non-linearity of learning, development and performance in sport. We highlight some of t ..read more

It’s time for better questions: Living up to the idea of as many as possible, as long as good as good as possible There is an ongoing discussion within youth football around the subject of ability grouping. The practice of early selection and de-selection of children through ages and stages are now central tenets of player development programs around the world (Güllich, 2014; Rongen et al., 2018) and have become a common point of departure for these discussions. Often pyramid like in structure, these type of development programs have been termed by Bailey and Collins (2013) as the S ..read more

I am delighted to have published two papers together with some inspiring colleagues over the summer. Theory to practice; performance preparation models in contemporary high-level sport guided by an Ecological Dynamics framework  is published in sports medicine. Conceptualizing Physical Literacy within an Ecological Dynamics Framework is published in Quest. Theory to Practice: Performance Preparation Models in Contemporary High-Level Sport Guided by an Ecological Dynamics Framework This paper was written together with some colleagues in the UK and Australia and is partly a collaboration wi ..read more

For the 5th guest discussion on our Learning in Development podcast we invited in Dr. Jennifer Turnnidge from Queens University, Kingston. Ontario. Jennifer did her doctorate degree in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University under the supervision of Jean Côté. In addition to her doctoral work, she also completed her Undergraduate (2009) and Master’s (2011) degrees at Queen’s. Broadly, her program of research explores how coach-athlete and peer relationships can promote positive development in sport. Specifically, she examines how coaches’ leadership behaviours ..read more

The 3rd guest discussion on our Learning in Development podcast was a real challenging one as it involved guests with a broad range of experiences, from a broad range of disciplines. We used the Menotti quote, “Those who only know about football, don’t know about football” that featured in a previous discussion with Jordi and Isaac from FC Barcelona (see here), as our point of departure. Tony Strudwick: Welsh national football team coach, Head of performance at Sheffield Wednesday, former head of development at Manchester United Martyn Rothwell: PhD researcher and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam ..read more

  The 2nd guest discussion on our Learning in Development podcast shone a light on various aspects of child-youth sport. We discussed some aspects that need to be amplified and others that need to be dampened. It is important to understand that this is not a discussion about how coaches design their sessions. It is  about the culturally pervasive beliefs in child youth football that influence how it is structured , how learning in development is viewed and understood; and how this apparent inertia can be investigated and challenged? Bastiaan Riemersma (twitter),Head of Youth De ..read more

I recently started the Learning  In Development podcast series together with my good colleagues and friends Mike Whyatt (twitter) and Britain Thomas (twitter) Over the coming weeks I aim to publish these podcasts on this blog and include some of my own personal notes and refelctions from the discussions. To kick off, we invited in  Jordi Fernandez (twitter) and Isaac Oriol Guerrero (twitter) from FC Barcelona  as guests. We discussed the culture of coaching, coach education, player development and some of the culturally pervasive beliefs around learning in development ..read more

As reported in the national Norwegian newspaper VG, Marius Johnsen, a former professional footballer,  carried out research into Erling Braut Halland’s journey towards professional football. The results are quite revealing and challenge many culturally pervasive structural and pedagogical assumptions, providing an argument for a re-conceptualisation of player development in youth football. For me, this once again highlights the need for an open conversation on evolving a purposeful and supporting culture for young players, parents, coaches, leaders and community in child youth sports. Why are ..read more